


TOPOGRAPHY, or: Five Places John Wants to Kiss Rodney

by vanitashaze



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 5 Things, Angst, Community: mcsmooch, F/M, Kissing, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-02
Updated: 2010-07-02
Packaged: 2017-10-10 08:49:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitashaze/pseuds/vanitashaze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He kneels at the wall and imagines that dip, soft and inviting, like hillside topography, like being touched by someone not as cold as he was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	TOPOGRAPHY, or: Five Places John Wants to Kiss Rodney

**One.** Rodney bends over a lot. Like, a _whole lot_. Fallen spanners and crystal trays and laptops he doesn't have time to sit in front of; it's why John likes hanging out in Rodney's lab a lot more than hanging out in the gym, where Rodney inevitably spends more time landing on his ass than showing it off. Sometimes late at night in the lab, when they're alone and their eyes are blurring with want for sleep, John will drop something for Rodney to snatch up. (Bite-sized Snickers are his current weapon of choice.) More and more, it's not Rodney's ass he lingers over, but the soft-breaking horizon of skin that shows where his shirt-hem rides up. There's a place there where his spine dips in at the lower back; like everything about Rodney it's more pronounced, a strangely deep indentation, almost a shadowed tunnel when the lighting's right. When the lighting's right, it looks like a way in.

(Rodney liked to tell Carson it's evidence of his premature curvature of the spine; in any case, he says, it was brought on by lugging around too many textbooks, and please don't cry for him when he becomes paralyzed, but for God's sake do something in the meantime. He doesn't mention it to Keller at all. John sort of preferred the rant.)

The funny thing is, John's always been one for a great ass - and it is a _great_ ass, there's no doubt about that - but as he gets to know Rodney the spine-spot takes precedence to the ass. Maybe it's because Rodney's ass is a lot like Rodney in that it's always _there_, in your face, whether he's bending over or shaking it around or running for his life right in front of you. It's _noticeable_, and more to the point, anyone can notice it. Rodney's overly conscious about his waistline, though, and always tugs his shirt-hem down if he thinks anyone's looking. It's like a game, or a Victorian seduction, and John gets a secret thrill every time he catches a glimpse. The place on his spine is pale; the curve isn't delicate as much as lush, framed by muscle. It looks like a secret place. John didn't even know Rodney _had_ secret places.

So he thinks about this place, sometimes. Okay, he thinks about it a lot. Really, there's a place low on Rodney's back that John obsesses over, late at night and cock in hand, when the engines of Atlantis hum like he's the pulsing heart to their veined corridors and metal bones. He kneels at the wall and imagines that dip, soft and inviting, like hillside topography, like being touched by someone not as cold as he was. John imagines kissing that place, and he feels like he could reach right through the walls to Rodney, if he tried hard enough; if he pushed far enough. If he wanted it enough, he could touch him without ever getting closer.

**Two.** It's April on Atlantis, and Rodney has injured his hands again. It's nothing new; in fact, like the rest of his body, Rodney's hands suffer from their own set of minor ailments, aching when rains and constantly sporting a collection of scuffs, scars, bruises, and scrapes. It's a danger in his line of work; McKay works with a lot of sharp things, and not all of them are people.

(Ronon says he has the hands of a warrior, with a vaguely amused look on his face. Rodney says his hands are a short summary of anything he's ever done, complete with footnotes, and once, he pointed them out: little dotted scars from acid, or sparks.)

This time, though, he was lucky to injure just his hands. This time a lab went up in flames off-world, torched by frightened villagers who thought he and the supplementary science team he had taken along with him were using the equipment to call the Wraith down on them. John, Ronon, and Teyla shot their way through the mob to the lab, and sometimes the villagers fell with torches still in their hands. A few of the women had what looked like bundles strapped to their backs, but if they came screaming at him, they got shot down, hopefully in non-vital areas, probably not; he couldn't stop to discriminate, not when Rodney and four chemists were burning right in front of him. In the safety and sanity of Atlantis, John likes to think the bundles weren't babies.

As it turns out, though, it wasn't Rodney and four chemists burning right in front of him. It was four chemists burning or suffocating, and Rodney scorching his hands on a door trying to get to them.

For a cowardly genius, Rodney could be so stupidly brave. The chemists died anyways.

The burns don't look too serious - partial thickness, Keller says, at best - but she puts him the infirmary overnight. One of the nurses had been dating one of the chemists, it seems, and when she saw the thing that had once been her girlfriend's body being brought in, she sat down and rocked and didn't say a word. One of the other nurses went to sit with her, pulling her head down into his lap to cry, and Keller moved numbly as she wrapped up Rodney's hands. Tonight she'll be thinking how easily it could be Rodney in the morgue and her crying, John knows. For once he's sympathetic, because won't be doing the same thing, but maybe, a long time ago, he would have.

("I couldn't," Rodney whispering, coughing, shaking in John's hands, "I couldn't -"

And Teyla soothes him like he would a child, like she would Torren. "Shh, it is alright," she says, "it is alright,"

And John stuffs his hands in his pockets to stop their shaking.)

Under the infirmary lights, Rodney looks tired. His mouth is an unhappy slash, but when John goes to sit with him, Rodney just picks at the bandages and says, lightly, and way too casually:

"I feel like - when you were a kid, you know, did your mother force you to wear those ridiculous mittens? The ones that puff up your hands until you -" He waves his newly bandaged hands, and the gesture is something between Godzilla and the opening move from _Thriller_. "- My mother did. Make me, that is. Those things were like _devil-mittens_. Jeannie and I used to drag her out to bring us sledding," he explains. "She hated it outside - you know, cold, wet. I guess she thought that if she couldn't be happy, no one should."

He smiles, one of those quick little grimaces he seems to use in place of shrugs. The memory's obviously not a happy one; it's unsurprising. McKay doesn't have many happy childhood memories. Really, he doesn't have any at all. It's one of the things John likes about him.

John says the only thing he can think of, though, which is: "You went sledding?"

"Some," Rodney says, and then: "Oh, don't give me that look, Lieutenant Colonel Speed Demon."

"What look?" John says flippantly, but Rodney either doesn't hear or doesn't care, because he's already talking again.

"It's all math and physics, anyway. Velocity and trajectories. I was going to do my science fair project on it," he says, proudly. "You know, if the nuclear bomb hadn't worked out, which it did," and here he trips; for a moment, it's all awkward silence, and then he starts, "Look, Sheppard... I - thank you."

"Don't mention it," John says tightly.

Rodney opens his mouth again.

"Really," John says, awkward, because there's a reason everyone thinks he's bad at this emotional stuff - namely, because he is. "Don't."

"Oh," Rodney says, "okay," and in a slightly unsteady voice, talks about inclines and Canadian snow until the nurse kicks John out. He looks small and lonely on his hospital bed - just _wrong_, John thinks, all wrong, everything's wrong - and John's suddenly afraid that he's said the wrong words, done the wrong thing. Failed, in some way.

Rodney's looking at his hands, turning them over; stroking at the unburned bits. For once, John wants to be honest. He wants to kiss the tip of Rodney's little finger where it peeks out from underneath the gauze. He wants to tell him, _it gets better. Maybe. Sometimes_. But what kind of shit declaration is that?

**Three.** There's a constellation of freckles on McKay's shoulder, as dark as he's ever seen. They look like a star-cluster, a nebula brought down to earth, and he would suspect a tattoo, if it were anyone but McKay. They're a very nice-looking arrangement. After about an hour on ceremonial alien drugs, John decides he really wants to kiss them, except when he yanks McKay forward, he only gets one sloppy sort of glancing kiss before Rodney pulls away, and bangs his nose besides.

"Are you trying to _kill_ me, Sheppard?" Rodney shrieks, and John winces. He's probably upset about the singing, and John knows he doesn't have the best voice, but really, if there ever was a planet that called for that song, this was it. He watches interestedly as Rodney glares, and hisses, quieter this time, as if it were a secret: "You could have killed me!"

"Was'n - gon' kill you," John slurs, and then remembers to add: "Sheesh," only it sounds more like "Shush", which is about the last thing Rodney's likely to do. He's kind of disappointed, though; for a moment there, Rodney was practically in his lap, and that is a very, very nice thing indeed.

It wasn't really a kiss, John decides sadly. More of a slobber.

Rodney sighs. "Jesus, Sheppard, what were you even trying to _do_?"

"Kissin' ya," John declares, though he has the vague feeling he shouldn't. But Rodney just rolls his eyes and mutters, "You are so stoned," under his breath as he settles down next to John, shoulders bumping companionably. Wrong one, John notices sadly, but decides to use it as a pillow anyway. It's surprisingly comfortable.

"And, please, please, don't sing," Rodney adds, and John smiles. Oh yeah! He had totally forgot.

"_I got a son' that ges on ev'ryby's nerves,_" he mumbles into Rodney's shoulder as he drifts off, "_an' this's how it goes..._"

**Four.** Of all of the pieces of Rodney to think about, his cock is probably John's favorite. John will - John _wants_ to kiss it, suck it, pull, swallow, he wants it in him or on him, mostly in him, mouth or hands or ass, any way, every way. He wants it any way he can get. On his knees. On all fours. Up against a wall, Rodney pressing into him from behind, his veins like lines of fire drawn in his flesh. John will scrabble at the walls, or leave sweaty handprints as he pressed there, pushed back; Rodney's big hands digging into his hips and upper thighs, giving a little pain with his pleasure, to ground him and send him flying. He'll take it in the conference room or in Rodney's office, on the _Daedalus_, flying shotgun on puddlejumper, all the places he can think of to make it as dirty, illicit, _wrong_ as it feels. Sometimes if he has a really bad day, when someone dies or almost dies, he imagines Rodney doing him slow, and the thought of Rodney wanting it - or, God, wanting John as much as John wants him - is usually enough to send him right over the edge. On the really bad days, when it's Rodney who almost dies, he doesn't imagine anything at all. It's those days he has trouble separating what's in his head from what's real.

This is how he knows when he's in too deep: because of all the ways it could happen, it would be good. Even it hurt, if it _ached_, if Rodney didn't know what he was doing and pushed it right in, if he thrust too deep and John choked on it, if there was blood, if Rodney didn't touch him any more than he absolutely had to -

Everything, anything, it would still be far, far too good. It would still be more than John deserved.

**Five.** "Oh, fine, laugh all you want," Rodney snaps. "You wouldn't know a fractal if you _tripped_ over it," even though they both know John would.

John ducks his head, grinning. "I wasn't laughing, Rodney," he says earnestly.

"So what's that then?" he snaps.

"What?"

"That look."

"This is me not laughing," John says.

Rodney glares, but John's poker face holds.

"Fine," Rodney says. "But he did steal that idea from me! I have dated papers to prove it. Somewhere. In fact, I -"

He stops, looking at something over John's shoulder. John cranes his neck to see, and barely represses the urge to scowl.

"Oh," Rodney says, unconsciously straightening - like a dog begging for treats, John thinks nastily. "Hi."

"Rodney," Keller says, fondly, "are you telling that same story? _Again?_"

"It's not a story," Rodney says stiffly, as if he's not sure whether to smile or frown. "It's true."

Keller quirks a grin. "Of course it is," she says, and leans down.

It's not a very good kiss, as kisses go. Rodney's mouth sort of lands on her chin, their teeth clack, and when they part, Keller's rubbing her cute little nose ruefully, awkwardly -

"Okay," she says. "That was pretty awful. Want to try again?"

\- And in John's head Rodney kisses his girlfriend as natural as breathing, their mouths meeting effortlessly: like puzzle pieces, or the gravitational pull of the sun; like they've been doing this for a long time now and never, ever want to stop.


End file.
